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NFL Buys Out ELITE; Will Offer Regional Combines

For most football fans, the term "Combine" has come to mean the National Invitational Camp held each February in Indianapolis.

In reality, smaller, more bare-bones versions of the Indianapolis Combine are put on all over the country as street free agents work out in an attempt to get back into professional football.
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"I like it when people underestimate us," Addison said. "I feel real confident in the guys we have back there. The guys we lost are no better than the guys we have now. The guys we have now are more sound. We're a faster defense, we just have to get a little more physical. I know we'll get the job done and we're going to prove we can get the job done."

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I'd like to see a spring football league. Not a fan of the UFL, because it's boring, but I would like to see a league that ran from April to the beginning of June, or something, and let unestablished players show their stuff before teams put together training camp rosters. Give them an 8-game schedule and a short playoff, and have them play in cities that have NFL franchises.

"The New York Metro (Uniform colors blue, red, white and green, with an 'M' emblazoned on the sides of the helmets), led by the immortal Jeff George, take on Reggie McNeal's Miami Whites, who run out of the Wildcat 80% of the time!" (As in "white sharks," team colors sea green and orange with a shark image wrapping around the helmet, its open jaws on one side, with its tail on the other).

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You can't hire replacement players when the owners locked the other players out. It's a federal law. If the players were to withhold services (strike) the owners would be perfectly within their rights to hire replacement players (permanently or for a short time).

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Why would anyone watch a bunch of guys running around in shorts and T-shirts?

Answer: Because it’s on TV.

The other answer: Because the NFL is immensely popular, and we’ll watch anything associated with it.

That’s backed up by the ratings NFL Network gets for the combine: Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports that 5.2 million people watched last year’s combine on NFL Network. Jackson writes that those are better numbers than Major League Baseball gets on ESPN, even though ESPN is in 43 million more homes than NFL Network.

**** her in da *****!

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I'd like to see a spring football league. Not a fan of the UFL, because it's boring, but I would like to see a league that ran from April to the beginning of June, or something, and let unestablished players show their stuff before teams put together training camp rosters. Give them an 8-game schedule and a short playoff, and have them play in cities that have NFL franchises.

"The New York Metro (Uniform colors blue, red, white and green, with an 'M' emblazoned on the sides of the helmets), led by the immortal Jeff George, take on Reggie McNeal's Miami Whites, who run out of the Wildcat 80% of the time!" (As in "white sharks," team colors sea green and orange with a shark image wrapping around the helmet, its open jaws on one side, with its tail on the other).

What do you think any non-NFL league would be like? The NFL is exciting because it's the top level and fans make an investment in the teams and players. You really can't do that with a smaller league because any player that becomes really good is going to leave pretty abruptly.

It's why people don't care much for the MLS. It's not that the country can't or won't embrace soccer, we just don't have the top level guys. And when one emerges, he leaves almost immediately.

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What do you think any non-NFL league would be like? The NFL is exciting because it's the top level and fans make an investment in the teams and players. You really can't do that with a smaller league because any player that becomes really good is going to leave pretty abruptly.

It's why people don't care much for the MLS. It's not that the country can't or won't embrace soccer, we just don't have the top level guys. And when one emerges, he leaves almost immediately.

I think it could succeed if it didn't try to play NFL-style football. Reggie McNeal is not going to be an NFL quarterback, but he could still tear **** up in a minor league. People watch arena football, and the CFL has diehard fans. Do you really think that there wouldn't be interest in a spring league? It'd be a vignette of a season, and the rules could be formatted to encourage a wide-open style of play. I'm not sure the fact that players would be looking at it as an NFL stepping-stone would be a negative either...that would likely mean that they'd always be playing hard. If a player has a couple good years and then makes it to the NFL, that's really not any different than being a fan of a collegiate program, where players only have 4 years to play; you don't have to have 10-year veterans on a team to cultivate a fanbase.